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Guest Albatross_

But you should be. I know this was never intended as a be-all-and-end-all theory, but it is too simplistic.

 

No, I shouldn't be. I don't have to understand particle physics to theorize that if a breeze blows over a bit of sand the sand will move in the same direction of the wind.

It's called "abstraction".

 

Where exactly the tulpa fits into the structure of the mind can be derived in part from what they can do to the memory.

Memory modification: a tulpa changes a memory accessible to the host. This seems to say that the tulpa isn't 'where' the host is in terms of structure, as it can exert more control over memory.

 

I'm making some pretty pictures of my own currently. We'll see how they stack up.

 

I think they might belong in a different thread.

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No, I shouldn't be. I don't have to understand particle physics to theorize that if a breeze blows over a bit of sand the sand will move in the same direction of the wind.

It's called "abstraction".

In that case you may be abstracting too far. As far as I can tell, you represent a finished tulpa here as a separate consciousness, and that's about it. As a paradigm it's not very helpful, since this is what tends to be suggested anyway. I propose that, to improve it, you need to be more detailed.

To go with your metaphor, when no-one really knows why the wind blows the sand and want to (as we do here, since this is not about predicting tulpas but explaining them, I think), then you do need to go into more detail, if not to particle physics.

 

I think they might belong in a different thread.

I promise they're probably relevant. It's not specifically about memory.

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I have no response.

 

Uh, i really didn't mean it like that. Like, i know that usually when someone says "i'm not accusing anyone of anything" he actually means the opposite, but in my case i really wasn't. (At least not you, i mean). [i should also probably stop caring about what other people think and why, but that's a long-term goal of sorts].

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This may be in the wrong thread. I don't know if this is a 'collaborate on Albatross' theory' thread or a general theory thread.

I am not a psychologist, not have I studied it academically; this is essentially a guess with no direct professional backing.

Note: similar to Albatross' statement, I am not asserting this as fact etc.

 

A stupid ugly diagram

 

The theory/paradigm is similar to Albatross', but with more arrows.

I have a problem with a major thing with yours, Albatross, and that's division. It's not a good way to represent it, because it implies that you lose half of 'yourself' to your tulpa, which we can probably agree on as wrong. So here we have the creation process as the creation of another additional, (eventually) fully-fledged personality.

As for what the consciousness actually is, I assumed here that it is the conscious part of the personality.

 

Some Assumptions

The human consciousness is synonymous with the mind. The mind encompasses the conscious and the subconscious. The subconscious is not an entity, but a concept. The concept of the subconscious differs between individuals. The subconscious is not necessarily separate from the conscious. I use "consciousness" and "mind" interchangeably here to refer to the mind as a whole.

I think that this is a bad idea because the reaches of the tulpa extend beyond the conscious. Within the mind, the host's personality [Freud] extends beyond the consciousness, and so does the effect of the tulpa: hallucination, memory modification and so on. This means that a complete theory must encompass the unconscious and subconscious (I am not saying that this is such, but that we want to move towards it). In this theory the conscious, the subconscious and the unconscious are all separate and make up the mind.

 

What a Tulpa Is/How Is Tupla Formed

In a person without a tulpa, the mind is one cohesive piece. It is self-aware. Its behavior can be described with a 'personality' comprised of various 'traits'.

But the conscious mind is (by definition) not aware of unconscious processes. Personality: true, though there [Freud] are conflicting and subconscious elements within that personality.

 

A tulpa is made by deceiving yourself into believing that certain thoughts and actions are performed by a consciousness other than your own, and by grouping those thoughts and actions into a conceptual entity. I name this process "dissociation". Thus a tulpa is made through dissociating a portion of your consciousness.

I mostly agree with this, but it's not a part of yourself that you separate, but something new. I say this because we (to the extent of my own knowledge/experience) do not lose a part of our own conscious minds when creating a tulpa.

 

The process is gradual. When the tulpa is first started there is little to no deception, and so thoughts and actions are not recognized as the tulpa's but continue to be perceived as part of the host's consciousness.

It fits with your own paradigm, but not with this. Again, the dissociation isn't an accurate description. What I think is happening is that the tulpa either isn't thinking much because it can't, or isn't sending communication because it can't; both "can't"s here are due to nascence/immaturity.

 

As the host continues to work on their tulpa, they slowly begin to convince themselves that certain thoughts and actions are coming from the tulpa. The sense of dissociation grows. The deception has not evolved into a firm belief, the tulpa has not fully conceptualized, and so the host has difficulty discerning/deciding which thoughts are from their tulpa, or if there are any at all.

See above.

 

Work continues and the deception solidifies into a true belief. Many thoughts and actions are attributed to the tulpa, and it begins to mature into a concrete concept in the host's mind.

See above.

 

When the host immediately differentiates between his own thoughts and actions and those of his tulpa, the tulpa is complete. It is perceived as a sentient, self-aware entity possessing a mind separate from that of the host. The tulpa is not sentient or self-aware, only perceived as such by the host.

Optionally the host can manifest a hallucination so that he can perceive the actions more clearly, and to further the deception. The host retains full use of his mind (illustrated by the dotted line).

What do you define as complete? A host may recognise an action as a tulpa's (emotional response, basic speech, etc.) long before even the tulpa's sentience is firmly established.

 

-Possession

The host acts on the the thoughts and actions from the tulpa. Another layer of deception is present that causes them to believe it is their tulpa controlling their body.

 

-Switching

Same as possession, but more thorough. The host believes they are watching the tulpa control their body and that they have no control over it.

 

-Parallel Processing

No strong evidence exists that would indicate this possibility.

 

-Merging

The host spontaneously destroys the deception that differentiates their tulpa's thoughts and actions from their own, and through belief change their personality to match.

 

How about:

-Possession

The tulpa gains partial control of the body, exerting an influence on motor centers though not taking control of them.

 

-Switching

The tulpa gains full control of motor centers and thus becomes the 'dominant' personality, relegating the host to an observer.

 

-Parallel Processing

The tulpa thinks alongside the host. I don't see what's hard to explain about this with either theory/paradigm.

 

-Merging

The tulpa is destroyed. If a personality can appear then it can probably disappear too. For tulpas coming back after a long time, the base attributes of the tulpa (those used in the creation process) are retained in the semantic memory, and are thus easily re-established as the same tulpa.

 

Albatross, while I agree that the creation process is probably based on deception, I don't think that it must continue after the tulpa has actually been created. Once the tulpa is established then it can do things for itself just like you can; even your theory lends itself to that.

 

Lolimancer: Once the tulpa is established then it can directly influence your experiences one or two steps before you experience them yourself. Something like head pressure is a tulpa modifying sensory input, either at the site of sensory processing or feeding directly into your experience.

Yeah, there's no conclusive evidence here; practically none that actually conforms to scientific principle, too. But there's still a general consensus on many aspects of a tulpa, and that's enough to form (read: guess at) a basic theory/paradigm.

 

So there we are; rate it, hate it.

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ITT I post, you critique, I revise, we repeat, and we end with a respectable theory.

I think it would be more appropriate to change this to "ITT I post, you critique, I decide what parts of my theory I want to discuss and depending on that I will reply and change it, we repeat until we end up with a theory I like"

 

Sorry for sounding so passively aggressive, but if you don't want to discuss parts of your theory for "easy of writing", then I can't take you seriously, because this is not how theories are discussed.

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Yeah, this is kind of how I think of Tulpas, but in my opinion perception and identity play a much greater role. I might post a few consecutive blog posts with illustrations this weekend to show what I meant by that.

 

-Possession

The host acts on the the thoughts and actions from the tulpa. Another layer of deception is present that causes them to believe it is their tulpa controlling their body.

That's where we split, I don't think a Tulpa has a separate thought process from our own, because we are one person.

It's us who perform these actions (same consciousness) but under a different identity. (identity could be translated to 'layer of deception')

 

-Switching

Same as possession, but more thorough. The host believes they are watching the tulpa control their body and that they have no control over it.

Yes.

 

-Parallel Processing

No strong evidence exists that would indicate this possibility.

Yes

 

-Merging

The host spontaneously destroys the deception that differentiates their tulpa's thoughts and actions from their own, and through belief change their personality to match.

When it Comes to Cancer,

Host unmakes identity (=destroys deception). All the actions former attributed to the Tulpa are attributed to him.

 

What else?

 

(First) emotional response: Usually attributed as a sign of sentience. Also with your theory in mind, Albatross, I see it as the first sign of deception or establishment of the new identity. It is the first time we perceive our own feelings as though they are from someone else.

 

Parroting: Host fails to establish new identity, but experiences his Tulpa just like a person with a Tulpa. The Tulpa feels parroted, but only because it is still seen as a part of you. (e.g. identity is not yet established)

What happens during dissociation is, that we talk us into believing our Tulpa would be a sentient being and is supposed to be out of control (when it truly isn't).

 

I think it would be more appropriate to change this to "ITT I post, you critique, I decide what parts of my theory I want to discuss and depending on that I will reply and change it, we repeat until we end up with a theory I like"

 

Well, I don't see where he avoided questions. It's his job to defend his theory, that's why he's here. I also see some some things that are 'errors' from my point of view, but I'm going to post something concerning that anyways.

 

Concerning parallel processing - who successfully and reliably did this before?

From my perspective a Tulpa might let unconscious thought processes surface, but these take place in a person without a Tulpa as well.

 

I would be very grateful if you could link some sources here.

What is a Tulpa? Blog

Rainbow 'Alyx' Dash

Pronto

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Guest Albatross_

I think it would be more appropriate to change this to "ITT I post, you critique, I decide what parts of my theory I want to discuss and depending on that I will reply and change it, we repeat until we end up with a theory I like"

Sorry for sounding so passively aggressive, but if you don't want to discuss parts of your theory for "easy of writing", then I can't take you seriously, because this is not how theories are discussed.

 

Purlox, either this is an extremely serious case of you not reading the thread or you have set a new world record with your lack of reading comprehension skills. I'm absolutely amazed that you have the tenacity to make this statement. Indeed I nearly find it humorous. If you would like to explain any of these accusations I'd be obliged, but for fuck's sake, don't derail my thread with it, ok?

 

I must confess I saw this coming, though. I had hoped participants would be able to hold themselves to a level of objectivity that was at the very least a step above vicious attacks that come dangerously close to ad hominem. Silly me.

 

Purlox, congratulations. You have managed to upset me considerably. Since this apparently was not outlined in the flawless crystal that I thought it was in the OP:

 

1) I claim none of what I write as absolute truth. My statements are formatted as fact for ease of writing. You are confusing formatting with refusal to discuss parts of my theory.

2) Yes, believe it or not this theory does not attempt to explain all of the controversies that exist in psychology. I make no statement as to the existence of a subconscious or the structure of the human mind because it is not strictly related to what I have to say. There are plenty of other threads for discussing that topic.

3) My theory covers only what I believe a tulpa to be and how it is formed. Nothing more. Nothing less.

 

To everyone: if you want to discuss the existence of the subconscious, give proof of parallel processing, or do anything else that is not the direct discussion of pieces of my theory that are actually present, kindly do it in another thread. This is not the place for it.


That's where we split, I don't think a Tulpa has a separate thought process from our own, because we are one person.

It's us who perform these actions (same consciousness) but under a different identity. (identity could be translated to 'layer of deception')

 

Nay, perhaps I was unclear. I do not believe a tulpa has a separate thought process either. I believe that we create the thoughts and actions of the tulpa ourselves but have a layer of deception there that causes us to interpret them as the tulpa's thoughts and actions but not our own. I am in agreement with you.

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Albatross, if we just critiqued your theory then we wouldn't be any help. What (at least I) am trying to do is suggest alternatives for the parts that are (in my opinion) erroneous. Given that you said in the OP that you would reach a respectable theory, I assumed that meant you would modify your own.

 

I'll outline what I think is wrong with the paradigm again here.

 

1 What you're saying in this theory is that the tulpa doesn't exist, and is only an illusion in the creator's mind. It's an interesting way of looking at it, but what I think to be fundamentally flawed:

-by this theory you would lose half your thoughts every time you made a tulpa (seeing as how you split your consciousness and recognise thoughts as a tulpa's).

-by this theory tulpas creating tulpas is impossible, since such a process contains no deception on behalf of the host

 

2 Your model fails to address important parts of the mind. It is established in psychology that there is at least an unconscious, and this is relevant to the tulpa in the mind. Moreover your model fails to take into account:

-how the host interacts with the tulpa and vice versa

-how the tulpa has access to the creator's unconscious, but not vice versa

-how the tulpa can impose itself onto the creator's reality

And so on.

 

3 Your model doesn't give the tulpa power

If the tulpa was just a delusion then it wouldn't be able to access parts of the mind inaccessible to the host.

 

Albatross, you have to change some parts of this theory, otherwise there's no point in us being here. Since you didn't seem to want alternatives to your theory, this is a list of some of the major things I find wrong with it.

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Purlox, either this is an extremely serious case of you not reading the thread or you have set a new world record with your lack of reading comprehension skills. I'm absolutely amazed that you have the tenacity to make this statement. Indeed I nearly find it humorous. If you would like to explain any of these accusations I'd be obliged, but for fuck's sake, don't derail my thread with it, ok?

 

I must confess I saw this coming, though. I had hoped participants would be able to hold themselves to a level of objectivity that was at the very least a step above vicious attacks that come dangerously close to ad hominem. Silly me.

 

Purlox, congratulations. You have managed to upset me considerably. Since this apparently was not outlined in the flawless crystal that I thought it was in the OP:

 

1) I claim none of what I write as absolute truth. My statements are formatted as fact for ease of writing. You are confusing formatting with refusal to discuss parts of my theory.

2) Yes, believe it or not this theory does not attempt to explain all of the controversies that exist in psychology. I make no statement as to the existence of a subconscious or the structure of the human mind because it is not strictly related to what I have to say. There are plenty of other threads for discussing that topic.

3) My theory covers only what I believe a tulpa to be and how it is formed. Nothing more. Nothing less.

 

To everyone: if you want to discuss the existence of the subconscious, give proof of parallel processing, or do anything else that is not the direct discussion of pieces of my theory that are actually present, kindly do it in another thread. This is not the place for it.

 

Do you realise you are committing Ad hominem here? Instead of addressing my point, you are accusing me of ad hominem, attacking me, stating again that you write some things as facts for "ease of writing" and that you actually aren't refusing to discuss part of your theory even though you have yet to respond to some of my comments on your theory with something other than by stating that you wrote it as a fact just for "ease of writing", then you make a strawman, you ignore that the structure of the mind is very important when trying to discuss how tulpae fit in the mind and at the end you seem to not realise that the burden of proof is on the people trying to disprove your claim rather than on you as the one making it. Because of these and many other reasons I don't see why I should discuss this theory with you.

 

Is what I'm posting here now ad hominem? No, because I'm pointing out your faulty reasoning and because of it I don't want to discuss the theory with you, it would be ad hominem if I instead first said I think you are stupid (or something similar) and said that because of that I don't want to discuss it with you.

 

I think it's reasonable to want to discuss assumptions made and definitions of terms used, because they are very important part of any theory, so I would like to discuss them. If you don't want to discuss them, then you are choosing to discuss only part of the theory.

 

My theory covers only what I believe a tulpa to be and how it is formed. Nothing more. Nothing less.

If this is only your opinion and you don't intend to discuss it, then you could have said earlier and instead posted this in some other board, because this board is for discussing theories and research, this is neither.

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Just read about it Albatross, and I find it really hard to believe that what you split is your consciousness.

 

Take this quote from a thread made by Queen Chrysalis in which I posted:

 

I think I get him, and will try to describe him, but be aware that my english sucks. First, read this. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Me_Mine Yes, the fucking beatles are fucking philosophy and poetry and shit.

 

What he's saying basically is, what is it that we should consider as ourselves, like the one who is reading this right now, the one who is doing the job of decode this words (the subconscious/brain), is it our bodies, or what exactly is it? This probably shouldn't be in the research section, except he asked to our tulpas to answer him, so I guess this could fit in research.

 

Let's get what he said: "Last night on #Tulpa I was told, by my tulpa, that I'm stubborn on the inside.". He probably never had seem himself as stubborn, and since she said "in the inside", he probably thought it might not be his "I", but his subconscious or something else, like something attached to him, to quote Aristotle: "Distinct by definition yet inseparable by nature, like the concave and the convex in a circle".

Then, he progresses: "It's something that probably comes as second nature to you by now, but for us hosts who never had the opportunity to learn the difference" That's what his searching, the difference between the "I", and everything else attached to it that we do not define by ourselves when we say "I was thinking", or at least we don't differ it from ourselves. But the tulpa, like he says: "You are born into it" "You learn right quick the difference between yourself and your host. Between yourself and the subconscious. But us hosts... We don't get it."

So he's saying that we hosts don't know nothing about who we are, to quote Nietzsche: "What does a man properly knows about himself!?". So, this self, what is it, that's what he's questioning, and he thinks the tulpa might know the answer, and that it could help us understand ourselves, and I do believe too that tulpas might know words to explain it, and since I think I cleared out what he wanted to say (at least to some degree) I believe that maybe now tulpas can answer him.

 

So, in my point of view, I don't think that tulpas arise from your consciousness, I say it arise from your subconsciousness. Something like Fede thinks (I guess) he says that if you parrot enough until it becomes a habit and since habits are subconsciousness activities, your tulpa begins to talk using your subconscious as a source, in my point of view, you begin forming your tulpa with your consciousness, but it does not use your consciousness or a "dissociation" of your consciousness to think, it uses a part of your subconscious.

 

To give you an example of why this seems more accurate, think of when you are born. When you're born, it's not like there was a previous consciousness for yours to arise, so your consciousness must have come to existance through something else, which would be your subconscious. When I say subconscious, be aware that I'm saying "everything you aren't directly in charge on your brain". That goes from you reflexes that are controlled by your nervous system to your hormones and so on, but there's more, like, it's your subconscious that decode the words you are reading right now, you are not consciously thinking " this is a T, so T this is a H, so TH, this is a I so THI this is a S so THIS", you are simply thinking "this" because reading became a habit in your brain and so you are now doing it unconsciously, or rather subconsciously. The same in my opinion aplies to tulpa.

 

PS: Don't let this discussion become something like "fede's wrong and a faget" even if he appears and acts like he wants the discussion to be about him. I'm not saying I agree that his method works, but he has a point.


If the dissociated personality is able to create lines of thought you(you meaning the original personality) don't have direct access to, how is that functionally(or at all) different than it being sentient?

 

On the vision of most philosophers, a Soul (which is what they basically call your consciousness) can't be divided by definition. You can't think of half a soul/consciousness in the same way you can't think a woman is half pregnant or something like that. I don't think I agree with it 100%, but it seems more plausible than thinking about splitting a person in two, even with the tulpa phenomenon, like I said, I think the consciousness arise from the subconscious, not from another consciousness. (But another consciousness might help the process, of course).


I have an issue with your view of the mind.

You say that (initially) the consciousness is the same as the mind, but I'm not so sure.

If there were no subconscious then all thoughts would have to be conscious; but then how does the body regulate itself? Your brain tells the lungs to breath and the heart at a certain rate, and your body to grow, and on. The brain itself releases hormones, too. But of these things, only breathing can be done manually (without tulpas) and none are always under conscious control. That does suggest to me that unconscious thought (and therefore the subconscious) is as real as the original consciousness.

You're ignoring other components of the mind too, namely memory. While not directly relevant, access to memory is important to determing the validity of the theory.

 

Edit: I'll see if I can do a diagram myself

 

Oh, someone posted something that I agree with. Say, do you also agree that a consciousness should arise from the subconscious?


The subconscious is a blanket term for all of the processes running in brain that you don't have conscious awareness of, but affect your conscious experience. I would argue that consciousness is emergent from subconscious processes.

I think that a tulpa is the result of adding more of these subconscious processes. At first they are very dependent upon the host because they are piggybacking on their already developed processes, they become more autonomous when they get more of those processes of their own. To what extent what is always shared is pretty up in the air for me.

But yeah, anything any of us say is conjecture.

 

OMG, there is someone here who thinks the same as me.

 

Something else to prove this: you can create a backstory to your tulpa and he/she would think it is his/her actual memory. It means your tulpa was not always conscious and always had some kind of personality, but you actually created his/her personality, in the case of course that you did so and didn't let her simply develop her personality. If your tulpa believes that the thoughts you put into her are her real memory, then it means she wasn't conscious on the moment she received them, or else she would know that those memories are fake or rather "artificial".

 

It means the consciousness is created, and also points that it isn't the split of one consciousness, but from it's subconscious, because you consciously know that the memories you put on her in this backstory are fake, but your subconscious may not, which would explain why they believe they are real.

 

Edit: Oh, and I also took you to the wall here, Albatross. If you think a tulpa is created by consciously fooling yourself, this belief must come from somewhere else, but not the consciousness. Therefore, you can't fool youself to believe tulpas are real if you don't have a subconscious to alter your conscious, because if it was like that, then the conscious beliefs would remain unchanged.

This obviously means that you will have to either acknowledge the subconscious or unconscious in your "paradigm" or you will have to give up on it. I would like if you just changed the paradigm like you said you would untill we reach an agreement, at least a partial one. I can't agree with the "consciously fooling yourself" because you can't consciously create a lie you consciously believe, you can only consciously create a lie in which you unconsciously believe, or vice-versa.

I'm brazilian and my english is not really good, I'll do every mistake you imagine, but I'll try to avoid them.

 

Tulpa: Kuruminha

Age: Began on the middle of october.

Form: My avatar.

Sentience: Confirmed.

Mindvoice: Not yet.

Working on: Visualization and Mindspeaking.

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